"Music of the spheres" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eagle's vision cannot take it in; The lightning's glance, too weak to sweep its space, Sinks half-way o'er it, like a wearied bird: It is the mirror of the stars, where all Their hosts within the concave firmament, Gay marching to the music of the spheres, Can ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... to us sweetly and unconsciously as if they were fresh from heaven—as if they had just been caught passing from the music of the spheres, are all handed up to them on dumb waiters ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... lamentation 'mid the murmuring nocturne noises, And an undertone of sadness, as from myriad human voices, And the harmony of heaven and the music of the spheres, And the ceaseless throb of Nature, and the flux and flow of years, Are rudely punctuated with the drip of human ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... continued to be objects of adoration. They had their special gods or guiding spirits assigned them. Their ordered movements through space, it was held, produce a vast and eternal harmony. It is beautiful beyond all earthly music, this Music of the Spheres, beyond all human dreams of what music might be. The only pity is that—except for a few individuals in trances—nobody has ever heard it. Circumstances seem always to be unfavourable. It may be that we ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... has added to the cosmical meaning of the Court of the Universe his four elements - monumental, horizontal compositions of pronounced decorative effect. Air is the one of finest poetic feeling. She holds the star to her ear and listens to the music of the spheres. The eagle, the symbol of the air, is used with finely balanced effect. On her back are fastened wings, and man, puny man, is aiming, by attaching wings to himself, to overcome her - ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... chimney. Then the phantom beauty, uttering a shrill, dismal scream, melted into air—and the enchantment was dissolved forever. At that moment Prince Violet heard a voice from the skies, as tuneful as the music of the spheres, saying, "Well done, my prince, the death of the wicked enchanter was necessary to the recovery of thy lost gold-fish—for while he lived thou wouldst never have seen it again. Go on—thy destiny ere long will be accomplished." A strain of aerial music succeeded, which gradually ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... night Within the lonesome latter years! An angel throng, bewinged, bedight In veils, and drowned in tears, Sit in a theatre, to see A play of hopes and fears, While the orchestra breathes fitfully The music of the spheres. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... glories of the New Jerusalem? What ear hath heard the music of the spheres, the steps of time, the strokes of chance, the blows of death? Men have not heard with their physical sense the tumult of sweet voices above the hills of Judea nor seen the heavenly vision; but millions have listened to that ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... supreme benefactor. And a note of exquisite moral beauty is added if the benefactor be the same person whom the guilty man had injured. This is what is meant by forgiveness. This is why forgiveness is so divine a thing. This is the reason why, when an act of genuine forgiveness occurs, "the music of the spheres" seems to become audible in our nether world. And this is also the reason why we often see such a strange kind of tie springing up between a person who has been chastised and the one who has chastised him in the right spirit and then forgiven him—a tie into which there enters shame for ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... worlds, and worlds of worlds, and heard there in her little room the tread of armies, the paeans of victory, the breaking of hearts, and the music of the spheres. ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... ether through which they move in their celestial orbits; produce harmonious sounds, varying according to the differences of the magnitudes, velocities, and relative distances of the planets, in a manner corresponding to the proportion of the notes in a musical scale. Hence the "music of the spheres." From what can be gathered of the astronomical doctrine of Pythagoras, it has been inferred that he was possessed of the true idea of the solar system, which was revived by Coper'nicus and fully established by Newton. With respect to ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... he smoked a pipe; he washed. Also, as he privily confided to us in the young hours of one morning, he had his doubts as to the divinity of the KAISER, and was not quite convinced that RICHARD STRAUSS had composed the music of the spheres. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... hand doth ever spill the cup That lifted carefully would quench our thirst. I must assume a wise placidity; As he puts on—Ah! damned hypocrite!— The air of purity. (Approaches Dimsdell.) I'll drink dissimulation at the source; I'll study him.—Thus might an angel look When, wearied with the music of the spheres, He laid him down upon a roseate bank To dream of holiness!—He hath not stirred.— 'Twas well I did not speak to Bellingham, For we have not been noted. Good, so far. All eyes are busy with their own affairs; I'll wake him now and ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... appear so strange if we consider what we have ordinary experience of, how much custom stupefies our senses. We need not go to what is reported of the people about the cataracts of the Nile; and what philosophers believe of the music of the spheres, that the bodies of those circles being solid and smooth, and coming to touch and rub upon one another, cannot fail of creating a marvellous harmony, the changes and cadences of which cause the revolutions and dances of the stars; but that the hearing sense of all creatures here below, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... invisible audience, as an orator has a visible one, who deserve a great part of the merit of his works. Some men may write for the religious or philosophic recluse, and therefore utter the emotions which come to ordinary mortals in the rare moments when the music of the spheres, generally drowned by the din of the commonplace world, becomes audible to their dull senses. Pope, on the other hand, writes for the wits who never listen to such strains, and moreover writes for their ordinary moods. He aims at giving us the refined and doubly distilled ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... not only to the study of the Pythagorean philosophy as to numbers, but also to the Kabalah, and will aid you in discovering the True Word, and understanding what was meant by "The Music of the Spheres." Modern science strikingly confirms the ideas of Pythagoras in regard to the properties of numbers, and that they govern in the Universe. Long before his time, nature had extracted her ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... is music in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument; for there is music wherever there is harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres.[218-5] ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... those two, your pilgrims without tears, Who prayed a largess where there was no dearth, Forgive it to their human-happy ears: Forgive it them, brown music of the Earth, Unknowing, — though the wiser silence knew! Forgive it to the music of the spheres That while they walked together so, the Two Together, — heard ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... of the religious perceptions in the past, namely, the comprehensive vision of life and the world and time sub specie aeternitatis is here abandoned. Eternity is unreal or empty; we never heard the music of the spheres. We are facing at this moment a disintegrating age. Here is a prime reason for it. The spiritual solidarity of mankind under the humanistic interpretation of life and destiny is dissolving and breaking down. Humanism ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... ten feet away!" She looked at him with affection and now seriously. "I know, I think, the look of one who comes into spiritual treasures. This is that and not that. It is the wilderness of lovely flowers—hardly quite the music of the spheres! It is not the mountain height, but the waving, leafy, lower slopes—and yet we pass on to the height by those slopes! Are you ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... aware that these apparently undecorated and unmusical masterpieces are radiant and resounding with a beauty and a music which "eye hath not seen nor ear heard." For flowers we are given stars, for the song of birds the music of the spheres, and for that human glow a ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... Religion lifts the veil, and shows us golden streets, lit by the Redeemer's countenance, and irradiated by his smile. Philosophy strives to reconcile us to death; Religion triumphs over it. Philosophy treads amid the pathway of stars, and stands a delighted listener to the music of the spheres; but Religion gazes on the glorious palaces of God, while the harpings of the blood-washed, and the songs of the redeemed, fall upon her ravished ear. Philosophy has her place; Religion her important sphere; ...
— The Story of Mattie J. Jackson • L. S. Thompson
... you, love. A fig for all the stars in the sky! Your bright eyes outshine them all in radiance, and overpower them in influence. All the music of the spheres is to me discord compared with the voice of Angelique des ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... gives up much the gods give more in turn: The music of the spheres for dross of gold; For o'er-officious cares, flame-songs that burn Their pathway through the years and never old. And he who shunned vain cares and vainer strife Found an eternity ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... great half-circle—it was only an airplane keeping watch over the sleeping city. Clerambault followed its sweep with his eyes, and seemed, to fly with it, the distant hum of the human planet coming faintly to his ear, like a strange music of the spheres ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... and in the other an Italian bravura, which she sung or rather screamed out with a thousand indescribable shruggings, contortions, and grimaces, and in a voice to which a cracked tea-kettle, or a "brazen candlestick turned," had seemed the music of the spheres. A little farther on we found two elderly gentlemen playing at see-saw; one an immense corpulent man of fifteen stone at least, the other a thin dwarfish animal with gray mustachios, who held before him what I thought was a child, but on approaching, it proved to ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... To mo'drate Bounds, his Wishes he confines, All views of Grandeur, Pow'r and Wealth resigns, With Pomp and Pride can cheerfully dispense, Dead to the World, and empty Joys of Sense, The Symphony of heav'nly Song he hears, Celestial Concord vibrates on his Ears., Which emulates the Music of the Spheres The Band of active Youths and Virgins fan, Rank'd in due Order, by their Teacher's Care, The Sight of all Beholders gratify, Sweet to the Soul, and pleasing to the Eye But when their Voices found in Songs, of Praise, When they to God's high Throne their Anthems raise, By these harmonious ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... number order and harmony and conformity to law. The order of the universe, he taught, is only a harmonical development of the first principle of all things to virtue and wisdom. He attached much value to music, as an art which has great influence on the affections; hence his doctrine of the music of the spheres. Assuming that number is the essence of the world, he deduced the idea that the world is regulated by numerical proportions, or by a system of laws which are regular and harmonious in their operations. Hence the necessity ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... the Organ Mountains; for as we then saw them, the centre height especially wore the appearance of a huge organ. "A grand instrument that," said Tony, "such as I suppose an angel might choose to sound forth the music of the spheres." ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... seen simultaneously; that is, the mind is made to delight in the unities of nature. At the basis of music there are certain fixed ratios; and in poetry, of every description, there are measures, and correspondencies. Pythagoras has often been ridiculed for his doctrine of "the music of the spheres;" and probably his doctrine was somewhat fanciful, but later science shows that there is a harmony in all nature—in its forms, in its forces, and in its motions. The highest unorganized and all organized objects take definite forms which are regulated ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... month. But the month is already gone before you can receive this. I hope your philosophy will not have forsaken you. Far from you be gloom and despondency. Attune your organs to the genuine ha! ha! 'Tis to me the music of the spheres; the sovereign specific that shall disgrace the physician's art, and baffle the virulence of malady. Hold yourself aloof from all engagements, even of the heart. We will deliberate unbiased, that we may decide with wisdom. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... if you know one Peter Bell, you know three Peter Bells; they are not one, but three; not three, but one. An awful mystery, which, after having caused torrents of blood, and having been hymned by groans enough to deafen the music of the spheres, is at length illustrated to the satisfaction of all parties in the theological world, by the nature ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... loud playfulness and mirth. Of those who passed him, gay in youth and hope, He took at Jupiter a shilling's worth Of gazing, through the showman's telescope; Sounds as of far-off bells came on his ears, He fancied 'twas the music of the spheres. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... heart melted. An indescribable peace filled the starry spaces, where the music of the spheres flung out its great, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... Then it cries 'More! More!' Where is the writer who does not think with the printing-press hot upon his track, and the sound of the pulp-mill making paper for his poems, and the buzz of editors, instead of the music of the spheres? Think of the destruction to American forests, the bare and glaring hills that face us day and night, all for a literature like this—thousands of square miles of it, spread before our faces, morning after morning, ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... harmony, like some grand overture by Bach or Handel. These verses are, I think, meant to intimate the great harmonious order and procession of the natural and moral universe, as Pythagoras intimated them by his 'Music of the Spheres'—those eternal laws against which man, that tiny microcosm, ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill |
